[QUOTE=An Gadaí]
Front room is common enough here.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=thirdwarning]
I’ve seen this posted here before, but even though I grew up forty miles from the city I never heard it until last week. One of my brother’s guests at early Thanksgiving said it.
[/QUOTE]
Hmm…thirdwarning, forty miles north or south? (Or west?) Maybe it’s an Irishism kept active on the south side and suburbs by the South Side Irish. I grew up in the south suburbs, and it was/is ubiquitous.
When I move to NYC, it took a while to learn to say “merry,” “marry” and “Mary” differently. Then, when I relocated back in Ohio, I had to re-learn to pronounce them all the same (merry).
I learned awhile ago on this board that "bag"and “vague” don’t rhyme to most people. My head still kinda reels about that one.
[QUOTE=kunilou]
Sunduh? That’s a corrupted pronunciation! The real pronunciation, especially on the South Side, is zunduh.
[/quote]
Ah, well there you have it. Mom grew up on the North Side. You South Siders are all wrong, naturally. Let’s discuss the finer points over a Ted Drewe’s
My grandfather said “zink”. He claimed it was because sinks used to be made out of zinc. I have no idea if that’s true.
Ahem. That’s <deh pare>.
That one’s great. I thought everyone pronounced it that way.
My husband’s family would eat “bref-dist” every morning, saluted the “fleg”, “warshed” their clothes, and used “warplers” to ply wires. I spent a good amount of the beginning of our relationship just trying to decipher his family’s conversations. At least DH can say breakfast now.
Add “turlet” to the list of St. Louisisms. That’s what you use just before you wash your hands in the zink. There’s also greazy for greasy, which is what my wife says. I have no idea if that’s a regionalisms or a personal idiosyncrasy. She claims that there’s a difference between “greasy” and “greazy”: “greasy” is just “with grease”, while “greazy” is “greasy spoon diner food”. I think she’s nuts, but that’s another thread altogether.
(And in case she’s still occasionally lurking: just kidding, honey!)
[QUOTE=Jodi]
Here in the South, a suite of furniture is pronounced a “suit” (“soot”). When I was buying my house, a couple different people asked me if I was buyiing a new bedroom suit. I had no idea what they were talking about. (Is is like a birthday suit?)
[/QUOTE]
That’s an Appalachianism, too.
I hate to say suit and no one understands suite, so I just say “furniture.”
[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
That’s an Appalachianism, too.
I hate to say suit and no one understands suite, so I just say “furniture.”
[/QUOTE]
Oh lordy, that must be the rich areas of Appalachia like Asheville. We just called them “stumps” or “logs”. 
Jay Stewart was saying “living room suit,” “bedroom suit,” and “dining room suit” all over the place back on Let’s Make a Deal. Wiki sez he was from Indiana.
Edit: Maybe this will help clarify for us all. Notice that it says for this definition, the “suit” pronunciation is also correct.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
In Kansas City, they take a shar every 24 ars.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t they also do that in “Balmor”? This pronunciation, btw, is a case of de-emphasizing the second vowel sound of a diphthong in favor of the first.
I wonder if this particular pronunciation effect runs in a swath from Missouri all the way to the East Coast?
I’ve heard ‘measure’ pronounced as <may-zher>. I think most people say <meh-zher>, though.
[QUOTE=hekk]
I learned awhile ago on this board that "bag"and “vague” don’t rhyme to most people. My head still kinda reels about that one.
[/QUOTE]
Which one do you mispronounce then? 
Seriously though, is a bag a baig? Or is vague, vag?
A friend of mine has a funny story from buying shoes in Buffalo a few years back. The clerk asked him if he wanted the “backs?”
The backs?
Yes, the backs. Right there. There! The backs! Do you want the backs? In front of you! Right there! THE BACKS!
.
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Ohhhhhh, the box! :smack:
I used to know an announcer from Southern Ontario who was hired to voice some spots for Western New York. He submitted his work, and then was required to redo it, to pronounce “dollars” as “dallahz.”
[QUOTE=Leaffan]
Which one do you mispronounce then?
Seriously though, is a bag a baig? Or is vague, vag?
[/QUOTE]
“bayge” <=> "“vayge” in Weescahnsin.
Here, it’s a “sack”. 
My FIL always says he loves the kwee-shuns on our couch. He was born and raised in Eastern Warsh-ington.
It was sadly recently that I learned a movie about someone was a “Bio-pic” rather than a “Bi-op-ic”
Here in Massachusetts it’s a “bubblah”.
Massachusetts pronunciations are a riot. One time someone was telling me to go to what I thought was “Weston Ave.” I couldn’t find it on the map.
“Weston? Like W-E-S-T-O-N?”
“Noooooo! ‘Weston’! W-E-S-T-E-Ahh-N”
Or the time someone came running into the lab, yelling “[CalMeacham]! The Lay-zahh! It’s Ocking!”
“The What?” I asked
“The Lay-zahh! It’s Ocking!”
It suddenly hit me.
[spoiler] “The Laser! It’s Arcing!”
And so I ran off to stop the Laser from forming an Arc.[/spoiler]
[QUOTE=fachverwirrt]
I will however, never stop chuckling at the pronunciation of Japan, MO.
[/QUOTE]
There’s Arab, Alabama, which is pronounced like “Ahab”. (Their high school mascot is an “Arabian Knight”, except that he’s wearing a suit of armor instead of wielding a scimitar.)
One of my favorites is the word “curious” pronounced using only one syllable. My husband says he was half grown before he realized that’s what his family meant when they said that something was “cyurs”.